emacsclient is pretty much the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if you forget about starting a server (using either emacs --daemon, or M-x start-server) you're sort of out of luck. emacs-connect just fixes that for you. Invoke emacs always with emacs-connect, and it'll reuse a previously created emacs --daemon session. If you have an X windows frame already setup and run M-x start-server (perhaps you already have this in your init?) then emacs-connect just chooses that frame right away.
sudo install -m 0755 emacs-connect /usr/local/bin